A well-designed contact form can help you capture leads, build relationships and increase conversions for your business.
In fact, 74% of marketers use web forms for lead generation. Half of them even say forms are the highest converting lead generation tool they use.
In this article, we'll explore the benefits of using a contact form and highlight some great contact form examples to help you generate more leads.
Let's get started.
Table of Contents
- What Is a Contact Form?
- What Is Included in a Contact Form?
- Why Use a Contact Form on Your Website
- 4 Types of Contact Forms
- 15 Best Practices for Contact Forms (+ Examples)
- How to Create a Contact Form with Visme
Quick Read
- Contact forms are excellent for capturing inbound leads. If used correctly, contact forms can help you keep track of customer messages and enable you to offer better customer support.
- There are generally 4 main types of contact forms: standard, order, registration and feedback.
- Simplicity is key when it comes to designing contact forms. Make sure your contact form’s CTA is clear, visible and concisely labeled.
- Contact forms should be easy to view and fill out across multiple devices, especially mobile.
- Use Visme to create engaging contact forms for all your business needs and add your branding assets with a click of a button.
A contact form is a web form that allows website visitors to send you messages or inquiries. It typically includes fields for the visitor's name, email address, message or any other field that's relevant to your business.
Contact forms are one of the best tools for capturing inbound leads—they enable prospects to reach out to you and provide you with crucial information you can use to follow up with them. They're commonly located on a contact us page.
And since they facilitate better communication between you and your leads, contact forms are a great way to build relationships with potential customers.
Before we've dive further into this topic, we've got an exciting visual treat for you! Check out our video on the 10 best contact form tips and examples to improve your lead generation. In this video, we take a dynamic journey through the key insights explored in this blog post.
What Is Included in a Contact Form?
A contact form typically includes various fields and elements designed to collect specific information from users. While the exact fields can vary based on the purpose of the form and the needs of the website owner, here are the common elements included in a standard contact form:
1. Name Field: First Name and Last Name
2. Email Address: To receive responses and provide correspondence.
3. Subject: A brief description of the user's inquiry or reason for contacting.
4. Message/Comments: A larger text field where users can write their inquiries, comments, or messages.
5. Additional Fields:
- Phone Number: Optional for those who prefer to be contacted via phone.
- Company Name: If applicable, especially for business-related inquiries.
- Website: If the form is used for partnerships or website-related inquiries.
- Address: Sometimes required for physical correspondence or location-based services.
6. Interactive Elements
- Dropdown Menus: For users to select a specific department or category related to their inquiry.
- Radio Buttons: To indicate the purpose of the contact (e.g., inquiry, feedback, support).
- Checkboxes: For newsletter subscriptions or consent to terms and conditions.
- File Upload: Allows users to attach documents, images, or other files if necessary.
7. Security Features
- CAPTCHA: To prevent spam submissions and ensure the form is filled out by humans.
- Anti-Spam Questions: Simple questions that are easy for humans to answer but challenging for bots.
8. Additional Fields: To finalize the form and send the information.
9. Confirmation Message/Page
- A thank-you message or page confirming that the form has been successfully submitted.
- Instructions on what to expect next (e.g., a response within 24 hours).
10. Privacy and Data Usage Information
- A brief statement outlining how the submitted data will be used, stored, and protected.
- Link to the website's privacy policy for more detailed information.
Using a contact form might sound simple, but it provides tons of benefits for your business. Yes, this goes beyond customer service!
Here are a few reasons why you need a contact form on your website:
1. Capture Leads
Contact forms for websites work wonders for generating inbound leads. They provide interested visitors with a way to get in touch with your business and give you their contact info.
This information could be as straightforward as a name and an email address or be in-depth and personalized, like their phone number, demographic details or position in a company.
With sales contact forms, you can then nurture these leads through targeted email campaigns and sales efforts and potentially convert them into customers.
One notable strategy is pairing your sales contact forms with lead magnets. With Visme's AI writer, you can create killer content in a matter of seconds.
Read this article to grab 15+ Powerful Lead Magnet Ideas Proven to Drive More Qualified Leads Your Way
2. Reduce Spam Emails
Publishing company email addresses on your website means anyone can reach you, including bots, hackers, link builders and advertisers.
This can expose you to security risks like scams and phishing emails.
Having a contact form on your site can eliminate the need for publishing an email address, considerably decreasing spam and unwanted messages.
3. Keep Track of Inquiries and Leads
A contact form allows you to keep track of all the messages and questions you receive. Even better, it helps you keep all your leads and their information in one place,
By centralizing all of this data and keeping it organized, you can ensure no leads are lost and track how well your lead generation strategy is working.
You’re also able to easily find customer-related data and pull relevant information as needed, such as for customer support. This takes us to the next point.
4. Offer Better Customer Support
An online contact form provides a convenient way for customers to reach out to you for support.
By responding to inquiries promptly, you can solve issues faster, offer better customer service and ensure your customers are satisfied.
You can also customize the fields in your contact form to ask customers for targeted information, including issue details, photos and screenshots. The more data you have, the more effectively you’ll be able to provide more personalized support.
5. Grow Your Email List
A contact form is an excellent tool to build your email list.
By asking for customers' email addresses in your contact form, you can add them to your email marketing list and send them targeted email campaigns.
Use email marketing to build stronger customer relationships, nurture leads, promote products and services and encourage repeat purchases.
Note: Make sure you get permission from your customers before sending them marketing emails. You can easily do this by adding a checkbox to your contact form that lets users opt in to receive promotional messages from your business.
4 Types of Contact Forms
Now that you know about the various benefits of using contact forms, you might be wondering what your contact form may look like.
The short answer is — it depends on the type of form you’re using.
There are four main types of contact forms you can add to your website. You may even end up adding more than one type.
Standard Contact Form
This is the most common type of contact form and typically includes fields for the user's name, email address and message.
Standard contact forms are mostly used by small businesses or websites that aren’t expecting very specific questions from their audience.
You can add other fields into your standard contact forms if you wish to collect more information about your customers, but you should ideally keep it short and simple.
Order, Quote or Demo Request Form
This type of sales contact form is mostly used by businesses that offer customized products or services. That’s because these companies first need to collect detailed information about the user's specific needs before they can quote a price and/or delivery date.
Similarly, SaaS companies often have demo request forms on their websites. This is because they need in-depth information about the user’s industry, team size and needs so they can arrange the resources needed for a tailored, high-converting demo.
Registration Form
This type of form is used to collect information from users who want to sign up for an account or register for a service.
For example, you can use a registration form if you’re offering a SaaS product, taking pre-orders, hosting a webinar or virtual event, offering a downloadable resource or sending out a weekly email newsletter.
You can also create contact forms for websites or landing pages - a registration form for a members-only page on your site where members can access exclusive content, discounts and other privileges.
Feedback or Survey Form
This type of online contact form is used to collect information from users about their opinions, experiences and suggestions related to your products and services.
Contact forms on websites are typically questionnaire-style and often have fields for open-ended answers.
Feedback forms are essential tools for conducting market research and gaining insight into customer needs and preferences. You can use this information to increase user satisfaction and improve your website or business.
Contact forms make for a valuable addition to your website. But not all forms convert well.
If you want to create a high-converting contact form that generates leads, improves customer satisfaction and gets completed often, follow the best practices below.
We’ve also included examples of contact forms from real brands and websites to inspire you:
1. Keep It Simple
This is one contact form idea that’s often ignored.
If your contact form is too long or complicated, users may abandon it before completing it. This could result in missed opportunities to connect with potential clients.
In fact, research shows that you can increase the conversion rate by 50% by reducing a single form field.
So, avoid using too many fields or making the form too complicated. Instead, only ask for essential information like their name, email address, phone number (optional) and a message.
MetaLab’s contact form, for example, is clean and simple–no overwhelming fields or paragraphs of text. They thank users upfront and assure them they read every message.
By keeping it simple, you improve the user experience and increase the likelihood of visitors completing and submitting the form.
2. Apply Your Branding
When it comes to getting eyes on your forms, you certainly need the best contact form design.
By incorporating your brand colors, typography and logo into your contact form, you can make it more attractive and consistent with the rest of your website.
Demostack, for example, incorporates its quirky brand style into its contact form:
Branding your contact form also helps build trust with your users. It shows you pay attention to detail and care about presenting a cohesive and professional image.
It can also help users recognize that they’re submitting a form to your business, which can be especially important if you operate in a crowded market.
3. Use Multi-Step Forms
If you need to collect additional information, break up the form into sections or pages. This can easily be done by using multi-step forms.
Here’s how Klarna for business does it:
Multi-step contact forms are less overwhelming for users to fill out, leading to more form completions and leads for your business.
In fact, multi-step forms can increase conversions by up to 300%.
Plus, even if some visitors drop off later, you’ll still be able to collect essential information in the first step, like names and emails.
Make sure each section is clearly labeled and easy to navigate. You could also provide an optional "comments" or "additional information" field for users to provide any further context.
4. Add Prominent CTAs
Your form's call-to-action (CTA) lets visitors know what they’re doing by hitting the submit button.
Are they sending a message? Requesting a quote? Getting in touch with the sales team?
Make sure your contact form’s CTA is clear, visible and concisely labeled. Use action-oriented language like "Send Message" or "Request Demo" to encourage users to complete the form.
Zendesk’s contact form, for example, has a bold “Contact Sales” CTA that’s hard to miss:
5. Optimize for Multiple Devices
More than half of web traffic comes from mobile devices.
This means if your contact form is not optimized for smartphones and tablets, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of potential leads.
Ensure your contact forms are responsive and easy to view and fill out across multiple devices, especially mobile.
Here’s an example of Clickup’s mobile-responsive contact form for inspiration:
6. Make it Attractive
Creating eye-catching and responsive forms can significantly lift your conversion rates. When creating forms, use an intuitive form builder, such as Visme Forms. It will guarantee that your forms not only look fantastic but also function seamlessly on any device.
Create beautiful contact forms that drive conversions in minutes!Sign up. It’s free
7. Use Descriptive Labels
Annotations or form labels enhance the user experience. Not only does it enhance readability and accessibility, it also provides additional context and eliminates confusion.
Notice how the form below from Optinmonster has visible annotations that guide the reader's eye and explain what each form field represents.
8. Use Auto-Fill
Use auto-fill to pre-populate some of the fields based on the user's previous interactions with your website. This includes fields like email address, phone number, location and name.
At Visme, for example, we fill out the country code for your business phone number for you:
Auto-fill can make the whole process of getting in touch with you easier. This will encourage more users to fill out your contact form.
9. Provide Confirmation
Let users know you’ve received their message by showing them a confirmation screen right after they hit ‘Submit.’ This provides closure and improves user satisfaction.
Make it even better by thanking your leads for getting in touch.
Looking for contact form ideas? check out one of the notable companies that use this approach.
The contact form on MASH Content displays a short confirmation message with a thank you once visitors hit “Submit.”
10. Pay Attention to User Privacy
Ensure that the form is compliant with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. Include a clear privacy policy and terms of use that explain how user data will be used.
Kinsta’s contact form displays a short note at the bottom linking to their privacy policy:
This protects you from getting into legal trouble and helps build trust with the customer by showing them you’re transparent about how their data is used.
11. Use CAPTCHA
To prevent spam and bot submissions, use CAPTCHA to verify that the user is human.
Here’s an example of a CAPTCHA box in Dreamhost’s contact form:
However, it's important to choose a user-friendly CAPTCHA method that does not create unnecessary obstacles for legitimate users.
A well-designed CAPTCHA can strike the right balance between security and user experience.
12. Offer Alternative Contact Options
Not everyone may prefer using a contact form. So, it's best to provide alternative contact options, such as live chat, email or phone.
Here’s how retail brand Hatch offers multiple contact methods on their customer support page:
14. Make it Human and Interactive
When considering best practices for form conversion, interactivity and human touch are often underrated. Adding these elements makes users feel like they're having a friendly chat rather than just filling out a form.
When you make your forms engaging, users are less likely to abandon them. This means you can capture valuable user data, which will do wonders for your conversion rate. With Visme forms, you can easily create interactive forms that engage, connect, and convert your audience.
Create beautiful contact forms that drive conversions in minutes!Sign up. It’s free
We’ve tested Visme Forms on 700,000 organic visitors and the results showed a 67% reduction in form abandonment, a 205% increase in form engagement and a 207% increase in conversions. Read the full case study.
In addition to contact forms, you can create memorable lead forms, signup forms, email forms, email collectors, popup forms, feedback forms, registration forms and much more.
15. A/B Test Your Contact Form
Looking to make the best contact forms? The contact us page examples we’ve shared above are all proven to deliver outstanding results.
But A/B testing presents an opportunity for you to reel in better results.
A/B testing your forms can help drive more conversions.
It involves creating two different versions of your form and showing each one to a small percentage of your audience for a specified time period.
This lets you analyze which form got the most submissions, helping you implement a contact form that works well.
For example, you might find that your audience is most likely to complete your form when it has less than four fields.
Use A/B testing to experiment with variables like the number of fields, CTA placement, font size, copy and more to find the best combination.
Also, regularly check your form for errors and whether it’s working correctly.
How to Create a Contact Form with Visme
With Visme’s no-code form builder, creating interactive and memorable signup forms is a breeze. These forms aren’t just engaging; they have been proven to deliver stellar results.
Visme Forms were tested on 700 organic visitors and the results showed a 67% reduction in form abandonment, a 205% increase in form engagement and a 207% increase in conversions. Read the full case study.
Follow these steps to create contact forms that will increase your lead generation up to 207%
Step 1. Choose Form Type or Style
Create an account or log in (if you’re an existing user).
Next, select the type of forms you’d like to create in Visme. You can create contact forms, lead gen forms, newsletter signup forms, lead magnets, contact forms and even custom forms.
Step 2. Use Premade Templates
After choosing what type of form you’d like to create, browse our library of beautifully designed form templates to select one that suits your needs. These contact forms templates give you a creative headstart and make the design process fast and seamless.
And if you’re feeling creative, you can also start from scratch. The no-code form builder is foolproof, so you’re sure to create amazing forms that deliver incredible results.
Step 3. Build and Customize Your Contact Form
Visme forms provide different options for customizing your contact form.
Feel free to select between multi-step or single-step forms. You can add or remove form fields like First Name, Last Name, Email, Company Name, Job title, etc. Also, select where and how you want to appear on your website: popup form, embeddable within your content, sidebar, etc.
Step 4: Design Your Contact Form
Customize the color of the form fields, background, text, icons, buttons and other form elements.
Pick already customized avatars and add them to your form. Or customize the character animations to match your brand.
You can customize the hair, facial hair, glass hat, apparel type and color and more to match your brand colors or even make them look like you. You’re also able to select the character's entrance and movement. The design options are endless!
Step 5: Publish Your Forms
After designing your newsletter form, you can publish your form designs with a link or QR code or simply embed them on your website using auto-generated HTML. Copy the link and place it as a popup, sidebar or embed within the content—or wherever you want to.
The best part is that Visme allows you to integrate your form with popular third-party software such as MailChimp, Active Campaign, Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Sheets and more. Utilize Visme’s real-time analytics dashboard to track the performance of your forms with metrics like form views, completion time, form starts, submissions and more.
Create Lead Generating Contact Forms with Visme
Contact forms are amazing lead generation tools for all kinds of businesses. They can also work wonders to improve your customer satisfaction.
Use the examples and best practices listed above to create engaging contact forms that visitors are more likely to complete.
If you’re looking for an easy tool to create branded contact forms, check out Visme's Forms.
Access our intuitive drag-and-drop features and templates to help you create good-looking and high-converting forms in minutes.
Better yet, you can access all the data collected through your forms inside your Visme dashboard. Sign up for a free account and start creating your contact form.
